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Althan's analysis of Sam Watson's The Kadaitcha Sung shows that the 'hybridity identified in the amalgamation of the profane and the sacred takes a turn for the darker and joins different aspects of white and black Australia in a Gothic critique of colonialism and its consequences'. (p89-90)

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yDarkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and FilmKatrin Althans,
Goettingen:Bonn University Press,2010Z17960302010multi chapter work criticism Abstract'At the heart of the Gothic novel proper lies the discursive binary of self and other, which in colonial literature was quickly filled with representations of the colonial master and his indigenous subject. Contemporary black Australian artists have usurped this colonial Gothic discourse, torn it to pieces, and finally transformed it into an Aboriginal Gothic. This study first develops the theoretical concept of an Aboriginal Gothic and then uses this term as a tool to analyse novels by Vivienne Cleven, Mudrooroo, Kim Scott, Sam Watson, and Alexis Wright as well as films directed by Beck Cole and Tracey Moffatt. It centres on the question of how a genuinely European mode, the Gothic, can be permeated and thus digested by elements of indigenous Australian culture in order to portray the current situation of Aboriginal Australians and to celebrate a recovered cultural identity.' (Publisher's blurb)Contents include: